Eulogy for Katran, Knife & Pen, MYST remembered
by filigod
Summary: 3 poems dedicated to or spoken by Katran (Catherine)


Poems for Katran

**_Eulogy for St. Katran_**

  
I wrote this at 2AM after finishing Riven, a few months after it was released. 

That was the first time I'd ever cried for any movie, book, or game, when I was going up the elevator to find Catherine. I'd figured out, the moment I read her journal, that the missing island must be the remains of the Great Tree she loved so much, and I had this gutwrenching feeling that Gehn's sadistic sense of humor, so visible all over the island, meant he'd imprisoned her in whatever was left of the tree. I'm sure many of you guessed the same. Even expecting it, I was so angry to see my fears realized. It had become more to me than a game, and then these characters took on a life as real as that of Frodo and Bilbo, Han and Leia, Aslan and Aravis. 

Thus I became a disciple of St. Katran, and I humbly submit the moment of my conversion 

  


  
Catherine 

Stands alone  
Upon a balcony of bone  
Overlooking a breathing sea  
That echoes sighs she never speaks.  
She turns, walks back inside  
To pace her narrow prison:  
Hollowed heart   
of the World Tree  
Cut to the knees  
Its leaves and sacred boughs  
Towered trunk long since taken  
Grist for Gehn's empty books. 

What does she see  
In her blood red robe  
Stripped of her people's mask  
Wife of a dead man  
Child of a dying world  
Guardian of a dream   
Goddess to a riven people? 

Truth written stark  
on  unseen pages  
Broken stones  
Fallen trees  
Islands drowning  
Sundered from sea to sky. 

Will she be the last  
Living soul of a dying Age  
Cast adrift on her  
Tiny shipwreck  
Divested of words,  
Her worlds? 

No. 

She waits  
Who understands too well  
For this humble traveller  
Who understands nothing  
Who walks alone, like her  
To find and set her free.  


~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

_**Katran Speaks: The Knife and the Pen**_

  
You ask me how can this be  
My love  
Have you forgotten?  
You are not Gods,   
And this is not Magic 

But Words are more than Things  
And the universe delights itself in surprises. 

Let me always be surprising you. 

You write the Page while looking through  
The window to a new Age  
I write within the Page looking back through. 

Yes!  There!  A ship embracing stone!  
That is the way I write.  
Well, perhaps, not quite that way,  
But see! You can stretch wings  
Further than you think. 

The tree roots deep  
And there is such a place  
Where the tree is the world,  
And the tree is not the world. 

_He_ did not see the pen I wield like a knife  
Master of Signs, he thinks himself,  
But he did not recognize my sign:  
You think you own us?   
You think you hold us?  
Here! I throw my dagger in your face!  
Here! This is the power of my people!  
Here! Do you not know whose hand holds the hilt?  
Fool.   
I can make worlds you cannot dream of, old man  
And you dare to tell my people the sign is your design?  
You who said I was only a figment of your pen,  
Now claim one of mine?  
Who is the teacher, who the student now? 

I will dream. 

Atrus, my love, if not for you,  
I think I might wish to be dangerous. 

Instead, let me spin you worlds  
To make you wonder  
And thus we will talk,  
Exchanging Age with Age  
and Word for Word,   
and Dream for Dream. 

The falling water:  
Is it at the top or at the bottom  
Of its plunge that you see it?  
Yes, both. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

_**Eulogy for MYST Island**_

_This poem is in the form of a Japanese Tanka, in which each verse follows a strict rule of 5/7/5/5._

Water slaps the dock,  
Gulls, circling, cry from afar,  
A path leads up wood  
Splintered stairs. Rusted metal  
Teeth loom, now forever stilled. 

Pass the star chamber  
Where once music used to play,  
A dried-up fountain.  
Brambles have taken the paths  
Through the forest, by the huts, 

To a clock tower  
Its face so caked by salt-spray  
It's illegible.  
A rocket lies immoble,  
Improbable organ mute. 

The library stands  
With moss growing up columns  
Wood panels peeling  
Within. Shelves are lined with dust,  
Not books. Two black scorch-marks, 

An old woman's grave:  
There are too many ghosts here.  
Once loved, abandoned,  
The island sleeps. Butterflies  
Hover over blue flowers. 


End file.
